Chapter 58

Chapter 58: .

Duncan had always been very curious. What was so special and dangerous about this gothic doll who called herself “Alice” that the sailors escorting her had been so nervous, and that she could still hold the title of Anomaly 099 in a world where strange and deadly things appeared one after another?

It was true that a doll that could move on its own and think clearly was already uncanny. The way she sometimes ran around clutching her head, or split herself up and acted separately, was indeed terrifying to look at. But in Duncan’s eyes, that level of weirdness still fell far short of the standard for a high-rank designation. The simplest comparison came from a piece of information he had heard from Nina:

Anomaly 196 – Blood.

It was a dangerous Anomaly sealed by containment in the underground sanctum beneath Pland Cathedral. Its true form was an amount of fresh blood equal to all the blood in an adult male’s body. This Anomaly had a certain kind of mind. It could flow and spread on its own and would actively try to replace the blood in a nearby “host” that met its conditions, seizing the body to escape. The way to stop it from flowing and spreading was to store it in twenty?two separate blood jars and keep it frozen. But if anyone bled within ten meters of its storage point, the seal failed at once. The blood in the bleeding person’s body would be replaced by Anomaly 196, and the host’s sanity would be taken over along with it.

This Anomaly ignored all countermeasures below the Saint level and would kill any suitable host without exception.

As one of the most dangerous Anomalies managed by the city?state of Pland, information about Anomaly 196 – Blood was always open to the public. That way, if the Anomaly ever leaked into the city, the authority could quickly locate it and take action.

Duncan had no idea what this so?called “Saint” really meant, but from the name alone he could tell it must be some very powerful supernatural rank. Perhaps that Inquisitor Vanna who had appeared in the newspapers was a Saint. And how many Saints like her, who might be able to fight Anomaly 196, could there even be in the entire city?state of Pland?

Yet this was only Anomaly 196, something ranked between one and two hundred. Alice’s number was Anomaly 099.

Within the top hundred.

According to Nina, there was some uncertainty in how Anomalies and Visions were numbered, and it was not always easy to compare their strength. But in general, the higher?ranked Anomalies and Visions tended to be more dangerous or stranger and harder to control. Or else they had once caused terrifying destruction or triggered some special historic event, earning their high-rank designation by being recorded in history itself.

In any case, a number within the top hundred meant bizarre properties and a level of danger that were extremely troublesome for the civilized world. It either meant the thing itself was awful to deal with, or that it had done something shocking in the past. And yet this doll named Alice, this cursed Doll…

Duncan turned and glanced back at Alice, who was honestly following behind him. She noticed the captain’s gaze at once, lifted her head, and gave him an innocent, slightly cowardly smile: “Hehe…”

There was no way to expect this one to figure out her own level of danger. He would have to look for clues later in the historical archives of the Pland city?state.

But how could an antique shopkeeper idling away his days in the Lower City ever get close to that kind of “classified information”? The “antique trade contacts” left behind by that cultist Ron were clearly useless. Most of the junk in that shop had a history no longer than last week…

Duncan thought quietly as he walked. The ghostly green fire of his spirit form burned steadily inside the consecrated lantern in his hand. Its light slowly spread deeper into the ship’s interior. The ambient light here, twisted into an “Inversion” state by the weirdness at the bottom of the hold, mixed with the glow of the consecrated lantern. Together they formed a warped, dizzying play of light and shadow.

To an outsider, this scene would probably look extremely eerie, gloomy, and terrifying.

Yet Duncan’s heart felt a faint calm. His power soaked into the glow of the consecrated lantern and seeped bit by bit, like trickling water, into the depths of this sealed?off hold. The structure of this part of the ship, which had been completely unknown to him before, slowly grew clear in his mind and sent back a subtle “sense of touch”.

The last fragment of the Vanished that was not under the captain’s control was returning to its proper track. Duncan could feel ever more sharply that, as he explored, the faint “restlessness” in the ship around him was gradually settling down.

It was just as Goathead had said. The bilge of the Vanished had been soaked in the Boundless Sea for far too long, so it had stirred up some “abnormal activity”. But as long as the captain came down in person to soothe it, the order aboard the ship would slowly return.

“You really are afraid of the seabed. Even just coming into a cabin below the sea level scares you like this,” Duncan suddenly said to Alice behind him. “So why insist on coming along?”

“I… I didn’t think that far at the time!” Alice forced herself to sound calm. “What I thought was, no matter how we walk, we’re still on the ship… I don’t even have the concept of ‘cabins below the waterline’! I’m just a doll!”

“You don’t even have a digestive tract, yet you’re studying cooking. Don’t use ‘doll’ as an excuse,” Duncan said casually. “You’ll need to study the ship’s basics properly from now on.”

Alice let out a depressed little “oh”. After a brief silence, Duncan asked curiously: “Why are you so afraid of the Deep Sea? Or rather… why are you so afraid of being ‘soaked in the sea’? I know the Deep Sea is dangerous. Many people are afraid of it, and you’ve said that before. But now it looks like… your nerves are worse than I thought. It’s already to the point that just standing in a cabin below the waterline and thinking about the seawater outside makes you jumpy… Stop tugging at the lace on your clothes. There are no spare clothes for you on the Vanished right now. If you ruin that one, you’ll have to sew it yourself.”

“Oh.” Alice quickly loosened her hands, then unconsciously started pulling at her buttons instead. “I… I never thought about it at all. I’m just scared. I can’t be scared?”

Hearing the doll’s nervous tone, Duncan did not comment. He looked toward the end of the corridor and saw a staircase slanting downward appear in his view.

That was the deeper place. It might lead straight to the bilge—the part of the ship that touched the Boundless Sea the most.

Duncan and Alice stood at the head of the stairs and looked down. By the light of the spirit flame from the consecrated lantern, they did not see any cabin structure below, but a single door standing in the darkness.

When he saw that door, Duncan frowned.

The layout here was not quite normal. First of all, the path to the bilge seemed too long. The stairways between cabins on the upper decks were connected, so one could reach each level quickly. But on this deck, the stairs leading deeper were at the very end of the corridor. You had to walk almost the entire way through the cargo area to get there. Without a doubt, this hurt the efficiency of movement within the ship.

Second, there was an extra door at the bottom of the stairs.

Duncan hesitated for a moment, then picked up the consecrated lantern and slowly walked down.

Alice hesitated even more, but in the end she obediently followed. Now she absolutely did not dare go back to the upper decks alone. Staying behind the captain was the only thing that gave her a bit of safety.

Soon Duncan reached the door. He raised the consecrated lantern and lit up the surroundings, trying to see if there were any words around the door. As expected, a line of letters on the doorframe entered his sight:

“The last door of the hold.”

“What does that mean?” Alice stared curiously at the letters on the frame. “The last door of the hold… Normally, shouldn’t the sign say what the room is for?”

“Clearly it’s a warning,” Duncan said thoughtfully as he drew back his gaze from the frame. He rested one hand on the handle and, before pushing it open, reminded the doll beside him: “If we go in and see any other doors, don’t touch them.”

Alice nodded nervously. She then saw Duncan push open this “last door of the hold” in one motion.

A strange, pale glow washed over them.

They stepped forward into a wide open space.

When she saw what lay beyond the door, Alice’s eyes widened at once: “Th?this…”

She stumbled over that “this” for a long time before finally managing to squeeze out one sentence: “C?captain! The bottom of the ship is broken! It’s broken!”

She shouted at the top of her voice, but Duncan did not answer right away. He was also staring, dumbfounded, at the scene around them.

The deepest layers of the Vanished, the bilge structure that had been soaking in the Boundless Sea—were shattered.

Everywhere he looked, the cabin was torn into pieces. Countless huge cracks and glowing voids cut through it. Hundreds of fragments of the hull floated apart in the open space, yet still kept a kind of “broken order”, preserving the outline and structure that the bilge ought to have.

Beyond the great fissures between those many fragments, Duncan could clearly see the “view” outside the bilge—

It was not the deep, dark Boundless Sea he had imagined, but a pale, murky nothingness, filled with countless obscure streaks of light rushing past at great speed.